Since television became a commodity in homes, hotels, offices and other buildings, coaxial (coax in short) networks have regularly been implemented in such facilities. As a result, a large percentage of such facilities built in developed countries during at least the last 50 years are provided with such coaxial networks. Provision of signal access to a building has been accomplished in different ways throughout the years, from the early solution with a local antenna receiver to wired cable TV connection, and later optical fiber networks. Still, there is a need to distribute access within the building, for which the local coaxial network may be used.
Multimedia over Coaxial Alliance (MoCA) is an industry standard alliance developing technology for the connected home. MoCA technology runs over the existing in-home coaxial cabling, enabling whole-home distribution of digital content. MoCA provides the backbone for the home digital entertainment network, and supports streaming media such as standard television and allows linking a set-top box to a TV and other entertainment such as computers or game consoles in multiple rooms using existing wiring.
In a system as provided by the present applicant, data broadband access may be provided to a plurality of independent users over an existing coax infrastructure in multi-dwelling units, block of flats, hotels, holiday villages etc. In such a system, a central network management unit may be connected to the coaxial network of a building complex, and connected to external data channel 3, such as a supply data cable or an optical fiber. The network management device makes use of the previously un-used frequency spectrum above the regular TV spectrum in coaxial cables for data transportation. The network management device is configured to merge an incoming data stream from the external data channel and a TV signal, where applicable, into the same cable and to send it through the coaxial network. At the other end of the coaxial network, the signals are divided by a modem, operating under a MoCA specification. Since the data stream and TV-signal are using separate frequency spectrums, the TV signal is effectively isolated from the data stream.